Genetic Science

Nature is rife with cheating. Possums play possum, feigning death to cheat predators. Crows cry wolf to scare off rivals. Amphibians and reptiles are inveterate impostors. Even genes and cells cheat. The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars explores the evolution of cheating in the natural world, revealing how dishonesty has given rise to wondrous diversity.

Leah Pfeifer has spent two years in an isolated cabin in Colorado with her almost three-year-old daughter, Anna, trying to protect the girl both from her inherited psychic ability and from the government organization that would be happy to exploit it. Trouble seems to find them anyway, and a panicked phone call from Leah's younger sister, Rowena, prompts Leah to leave in search of treatment for Anna and to rescue Rowena from the cycle of abuse that Leah herself narrowly escaped years ago.

In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin's theory as a 19th-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that is all but disintegrating under an onslaught of new scientific discoveries. Bethell presents a concise yet wide-ranging tour of the flash points of modern evolutionary theory. Bethell's account is enriched by his own personal encounters with of some of our era's leading scientists and thinkers.

One of the biggest discoveries in physics, the quest for the Higgs boson demonstrates the value of a good theory. In July 2012, a Higgs-like particle was found near the energies scientists predicted. Now, armed with better evidence and better questions, the scientific process continues. In this audiobook, we’ve gathered our best reporting to explain that process - the theories, the search, the discovery, and the ongoing questions.

Alvis Bowman, the super genius who created AI humanoids and started WW3, is now free and after the only thing I care about. My family. He will stop at nothing to take away the woman I love and will destroy everything in his path to make sure that happens. With only a small crew of men to call my own, I must stand up to the very man who brought Earth to its knees. The very man who was only defeated because Earth rallied together. Now, I must do the same, with nothing but a single ship and my wits and courage.

Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrdinger posed a simple, yet profound, question: What is life?. How could the very existence of such extraordinary chemical systems be understood? This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists both before, and ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology?

United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.

Who are we? How do scientists define Homo sapiens, and how does our species differ from the extinct hominins that came before us? In this accessible account palaeoarchaeologist Paul Pettitt shows how the latest scientific advances, especially in genetics, are revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution. Pettitt reveals the extraordinary story of how our ancestors adapted to unforgiving and relentlessly changing climates, leading to remarkable innovations in art, technology, and society that we are only now beginning to comprehend.

The Recorder's fate has been sealed, but the Consortium is not the only enemy. Labeled an aberration by the Consortium, the Recorder is not yet free. Time is running out as an engineered bioweapon wreaks havoc on friend and foe alike. Stopping both the biological agent and the people who created it is no easy task, especially since the Recorder and her friends are trapped on a research station infested with behemoth insects. Without Consortium technology, the probability of neutralizing the threat falls to nothing.

Joe begins seeing strange flashes. Ghosts of images, overlaid atop his own vision. Actions he could have taken but didn’t. Worse, the visions are increasing in scope and frequency. Believing he’s going mad, he confronts the scientist, only to discover the implant’s shocking origin.

Sex, Time, and Power offers a tantalizing answer to an age-old question: Why did big-brained Homo sapiens suddenly emerge some 150,000 years ago? The key, according to Shlain, is female sexuality. Drawing on an awesome breadth of research, he shows how, long ago, the narrowness of the newly bipedal human female's pelvis and the increasing size of infants' heads precipitated a crisis for the species. Natural selection allowed for reconfiguration of hormonal cycles, entraining women with the periodicity of the moon - and imbuing women with the concept of time.

Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution.

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

It's been 10 years since Handry was wrenched away from his family and friends, forced to wander a world he no longer understood. But with the help of the Ancients, he has cobbled together a life, of sorts, for himself and his fellow outcasts. Wandering from village to village, welcoming the folk that the townships abandon, fighting the monsters the villagers cannot - or dare not - his ever-growing band of misfits has become the stuff of legend, a story told by parents to keep unruly children in line.

This 1911 collection of thirty-three stories, selected and revised by the author from amongst his huge output of short fiction, includes tales of comedy, horror, monsters, and strange worlds. In his Introduction, Wells writes that the book brings together, “All the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again,” and that, “No short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume.”

Eight generations of pioneers embark on a 300-year voyage to escape Earth’s demise. Their mission: ensure humanity’s survival on a distant exoplanet. Armed with a DNA database of over a million Earth species, they establish a new world. Yet, what they discover will shatter every preconception. Brace for a jaw-dropping revelation connecting them to beings defying the very essence of the universe.

Ten years after the aliens left Earth, humanity has succeeded in building a ship, Friendship, in which to follow them home to Kindred. Aboard are a crew of scientists, diplomats, and a squad of Rangers to protect them. But when the Friendship arrives, they find nothing they expected: no interplanetary culture, no industrial base, and no cure for the spore disease. A timeslip in the apparently instantaneous travel between worlds has occurred, and far more than 10 years have passed.

In this book, evolutionary psychologist Dennis Krebs explains how virtuous behaviors such as altruism, justice, honesty, loyalty, self-control, purity, and respect for authority, have evolved in humans and other species. He argues that the key to solving puzzles of morality—such as what it is, how we acquire moral traits, why we sometimes behave badly, and how we make moral decisions—lies in figuring out what adaptive functions moral traits served in early human environments and how they are influenced by social learning, culture, and strategic social interactions in the modern world.

When a death in the family pulls King away, and the rest of the team is sent on a mission, Fort Bragg is attacked by a strange and overwhelming force. When the dust settles, Fiona is gone. The attack is part of a larger offensive. Around the world, the last speakers of ancient languages are being systematically exterminated. As they fight to find the mastermind behind the killings and Fiona's kidnapping, the team is hunted by strange creatures that defy explanation.

In a neon-lit near future, the elite is gifted with the technology to make Portraits - perfect copies, designed to bear the weight of their fame. Lulabelle Rock, a star actress, exists again as her thirteenth Portrait. But unlike her predecessors, she's an assassin, meant to erase every version of Lulabelle's past self. As she winds through the maze of Bubble City, her task becomes tangled with a developing conscience and blurred identities. And when she fall's in love with one of her targets, she's faced with a profound dilemma; when you don’t want to kill yourself, what’s the alternative?